Sunday, August 21, 2016

East Coast 2016: Taking the 5 hour Via Rail train to Montreal

Well, VIA decided that they hate us (once more) and stuck us with Budd HEP1 cars, which are old, rattly, and shaky. Oh, and they have seats that make BART look luxurious. More on that later.

This is a VIA GMD F40-3 pulling a rake of HEP1 or II cars.

See, this was our hotel view. Ah...I'm going to miss this.

This was our train, with Budd HEPI cars.

This is the interior of the train.

They were so old, they still had ashtrays!

This is Cherry Street Signal Tower, as seen from our train window.

They are so old, there is an option to change the car from smoking to non-smoking.

I think that this might be an old station, or something :-/.

<Gasp!> an actual water tower!

Here we have the video report of our trip between the two cities.

When we reached Montreal Gare Centrale, we docked next to the Ocean which would leave to Halifax. Y'know, it's possible to make a journey across Canada by train, from Vancouver all the way to Halifax. And until 2005, it was possible to make this journey entirely by sleeper train!

These passenger cars are referred to as "Renaissance" cars. They were originally bought by England to use as their cross channel sleeper service between Paris and English cities like London, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, and other Scottish cities like Edinbrugh and Scotland. Yeah that never happened. So VIA Rail stuck a bunch on a boat and they're running them on "Corridor" services and the Ocean train.

Next post shall be about walking around Montreal and railfanning at Dorval.